- Can I ask you a question?
Is it ever appropriate to laugh when a billionaire dies?
- CBS News has learned that the Boston Coast Guard
is operating a search and rescue mission
for a missing submarine.
- Banging sounds detected in the North Atlantic
might be coming from the five passenger Titan submersible.
But as the Multinational Search Coalition
scours the Atlantic Ocean,
time is running out.
- The race to save five people
who are on board a submersible
that has gone missing in the North Atlantic
close to the wreck of the Titanic.
Earlier, the U.S. Coast Guard said that the vessel
may only have 40 hours of breathable air left
for the five people on board.
- Human remains appear to be found
in debris of the Titan submersible,
which was recovered
from the floor of the Atlantic on Wednesday.
- So at this point,
I'm sure everybody's heard about the submersible,
I didn't know that that was a thing
until this whole conversation,
that imploded with a bunch of billionaires inside of it.
And it started a really interesting conversation
about whether or not it is okay to laugh
when billionaires die.
And I sort of wanted to ask you guys this question
because I've got feelings,
I've got thoughts.
So Stockton Rush owns a company called OceanGate.
And OceanGate does these tourist trips
down to the wreckage of the Titanic
to see a piece of history.
And honestly, as somebody who likes the ocean
and old things,
I can definitely see the appeal
to doing something like this.
But I stopped seeing the appeal when I got the price tag,
which was $250,000.
I think that's almost about the amount of money
I spent on college.
Now, Stockton Rush was a very arrogant man
who believed that he knew better than everyone else
when it came to submersibles.
He thought that he was going to be able
to use several different types of material
on his submersible,
and that it wouldn't crush under pressure.
I didn't know this until this conversation,
but it makes a lot of sense.
You know, I didn't really pay much attention
in science class.
I was sketching in my sketchbook instead.
But apparently when you go really far down in the ocean,
you have to account for the amount of weight
of all of the water above you.
And Stockton Rush believed that he could make a submersible
- And when people who have been working in the industry
for a really long time
told him that that was a bad idea,
he said that they were just jealous and bitter
and they didn't want for him to be a hashtag innovator.
- OceanGate shouldn't have been doing what it was doing.
I think that's pretty clear.
I wish I had been more vocal about that,
but I think I was unaware that they weren't certified
because I wasn't really studying it.
I wasn't really interested.
Stockton Rush asked me
if I wanted to go out there and dive this season.
I wasn't interested.
There was a lot of concern about this outfit and this sub,
a lot of concern,
even to the extent that I wasn't involved in it
because I was making "Avatar 2" at the time,
but a lot of them got together
and wrote a letter to OceanGate and said,
"You have to certify,
"you cannot take people down.
"It's irresponsible and it could lead to catastrophe."
- One of the other unorthodox things
that he employed in this submersible
was apparently it was being controlled
by a aftermarket game controller.
And like I'm sorry, but when I first heard about this,
I got so like,
I got like the chills
because I cannot imagine being under the water
super, super far away
and using a game controller.
It would just make me feel so scared.
and apparently there were five people on it.
I'm gonna read through the list of who else was on there.
There was Hamish Harding,
a retired astronaut.
A Titanic researcher named Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
And Pakistani businessman, Shahzada Dawood,
and his son, Suleman Dawood, was also on the submersible.
Hopefully I said that correctly.
And all of these men were billionaires.
Unfortunately, when they went down to see the Titanic,
they lost contact with the surface level.
And the further down they went,
the more pressure there was on the submersible.
And eventually, the submersible would implode.
Apparently, it happened so fast
that they didn't see it coming.
So when this was happening,
I was completely captivated by this story
because I guess so many aspects of it were surprising to me.
Like I didn't know
that people just like casually went down to see the Titanic.
And apparently it was not something
that you should be doing casually.
And this was a great example of why exactly that is.
Now, I wasn't the only one.
There was a lot of conversation on social media about this,
and one of the main conversations
was whether or not
jokes about the submersible were appropriate.
- If I saw people
openly calling for the death of any group of humans,
I would speak out against it.
And seeing thousands of people feel comfortable
saying that all billionaires should die
makes me uncomfortable.
A rich person's life isn't valued less,
a poor person's life isn't valued less.
Also, if so many of you don't believe in capital punishment
but you also believe that billionaires should die,
how exactly is that going to work out?
The rebuttal I'm getting
is Conservatives think, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, please don't make me defend Conservatives,
but I don't openly see them
calling for the death of anybody.
- And I'm personally pretty divided on this
because on one hand,
I think it's really, really dark and kinda messed up
to celebrate the death of anyone.
I'm inclined to believe
that even people that I personally hate
have people that love them, right?
And I don't think that while those people are grieving
it is particularly helpful to read all of these comments
about how it's funny that they died.
And on the other hand, they're billionaires.
I don't think a lot of people understand
how much money a billion dollars is.
Like $250,000, like I said, was the price of my education,
my four year overpriced education.
But for them,
it's literally like the price of a cup of coffee.
Like I said, back in school,
I was a weird kid with a sketchbook
who sat in the back of class
and didn't really pay attention.
So math was not my best subject, right?
But there's about I think 4,000 tickets you could buy
to go down to the Titanic
before you would start reaching a billion dollars, right?
4,000.
4,000, okay?
These people are stupid rich.
And while I understand that America's capitalistic system
has taught us that people who have money are smart,
this was very obviously an example
of that not exactly being the case.
In all reality,
there is absolutely no way to be a billionaire
without hoarding your money.
And even if you're a billionaire
who isn't directly exploiting people by pointing your finger
and saying, "Exploit this person for me,"
you're still looking at people suffering in the world
and saying, "But it's mine though," right?
Like I don't know if anyone else is like this,
but I'm somebody
who has recently become more financially comfortable,
and I'm just this sort of person
who doesn't really like having a lot of money.
Like I like being secure,
I like having enough money to survive or whatever
and I like having access
to do things that I like to do, right?
But if I have money in my hand
and I don't really necessarily like need it,
I'm more inclined to hand it to somebody else who does
because not only does that feel really good,
but I would feel really bad
sitting over here with my money
not helping somebody who really needs it.
I'll never forget I was in Target once
and this woman came up to me
and she asked if I could buy some things for her
because she was homeless and she needed them.
And I did it without a second thought
because for me it was just like why wouldn't I?
Like I'm not gonna miss the $20.
The $20 that I'm spending on her right now
is life changing for her.
And I'm not a billionaire.
I've never seen a billion dollars in my life,
probably never will.
And if I feel like that,
it is so hard for me to understand
why somebody who is a billionaire
can't even imagine doing a little bit more
than what they're doing currently.
If I had a billion dollars,
there's no way in hell it wouldn't go directly to a charity,
directly to people who need it
because I just would feel strange
sitting on that much money.
I get that so many people don't like the idea
of laughing at billionaires
because they think maybe one day they will become one
and they wouldn't wanna be laughed at, right?
But here's the thing, you guys,
this is the harsh reality,
you're probably never gonna be a billionaire.
And I'm not saying that because I don't believe in you
and that you couldn't work hard and get there or whatever,
but the reality is that the people who have that money,
the people who are the billionaires
are working incredibly hard
to make it so that you don't ever have a billion dollars.
So it's kinda built into the system
that there needs to be people beneath them.
Some of the people who passed away on this trip
were incredibly impressive
and I will not take that away from them.
But in my view,
it's very hard for me to see good billionaire
as not an oxymoron.
And that's not because I hate rich people
or because I like being a perpetual victim
who is poor or whatever
because I'm definitely not that.
It's more that it just,
it sits poorly in my mind
that you could sit there and be so comfortable
while so many people are suffering.
Like you couldn't just cut it down to a million.
Like it couldn't just be a million,
it's gotta be a billion,
you know what I mean?
Now, to me, the millionaire's dying part
isn't really what was funny to me about this.
What was kind of humorous
was that there was so much footage of Stockton Rush
arguing that this is not something
that he should be concerned about.
- I'd like to be remembered as an innovator.
I think it was General MacArthur said,
"You're remembered for the rules you break."
And 've broken some rules to make this.
I think I've broken them with logic and good engineering.
Behind me, the carbon fiber and titanium,
there's a rule you don't do that.
Well, I did.
- If you watch footage of Stockton Rush,
he is incredibly arrogant.
He is incredibly full of himself
and just sure that everything he wants to happen
will indeed happen.
And it's just kind of funny to watch,
knowing that he succumbed to his own arrogance.
It's very much an Icarus flying too close to the sun
kind of moment.
And for me,
that's kind of where the humor in it all comes from.
He genuinely believed that all of the criticism
that people who had been in the submarine industry
for a very long time,
he genuinely believed
that these people were just jealous of him
or they just wanted to stifle his entrepreneurial spirit.
And it's just like oh my gosh,
maybe these people didn't want you to die.
Maybe these people
didn't want the people you would take down there to die.
It's just so unfortunate
that some people get to a point
where they are so opposed to criticism
that they're not able to actually hear
what they need to hear.
Yeah, I do think it's a little funny
how confident and cocky and arrogant he is
about something that ultimately ended his life.
That's what I find to be funny,
not his death.
Now, there's another aspect of this conversation
because Stockton Rush made a couple of comments
about how he didn't want a bunch of old white men
working on the submersible.
And there's some people who are very strange on the right
who are trying to argue that this happened
because of wokeness.
- [Stockton] When I started the business,
one of the things you'll find,
there are other sub operators out there,
but they typically have gentlemen
who are ex-military submariners,
and you'll see a whole bunch of 50 year old white guys.
I wanted our team to be younger,
to be inspirational.
And I'm not gonna inspire a 16 year old
to go pursue marine technology.
- Get woke, go broke has been thrown around a lot lately.
But is it actually possible that wokeness
was one of the main reasons that OceanGate's Titan sub
went missing while trying to explore the Titanic?
Because what the OceanGate CEO is basically saying here
is he found diversity more important than experience.
Now, this operation just seems to be a huge mess,
and you really hate to think,
if the CEO was focused more on safety
than he was of being inspirational,
would these people be safely in their homes right now?
Because affirmative action like many social justice issues
seem great on the surface,
but only when they're impacting something inconsequential.
- And if you look at who actually worked on this project,
if you look at who actually worked
on the Titanic submersible,
it is definitely mostly white dudes.
It is 100% mostly white men.
And again, why did this all fail?
Because of the arrogance of a white man.
The only reason it imploded
was because his submersible
was built out of three different, I think, materials
that really aren't good for the thing
that he was wanting to do with them, right?
And so many people warned him about this,
and he decided to go forward anyway.
So it's so bizarre to me
that people will cling onto a couple of comments
that he made about wanting to hire younger, fresher people
and not the same old white men
who are in the submarine industry.
Which, yes, that is the vast majority of people
in the submarine industry.
Clinging onto this comment as though it's wokeness.
Wokeness salted my land,
burned my crops and fucked my wife, right?
Like the way that people talk about wokeness sometimes
is like, I don't know, pretty funny to me.
But to me, the funniest part
is yet again his degree of arrogance.
And for me, that will always be the thing
that kinda makes me giggle about this.
I'm really, really sorry,
especially for the loss of the Pakistani billionaire's son.
I think that that is just so unfortunate.
And he didn't even want to do it.
He only went down there to impress his father,
and he died.
And that, oh my gosh, he was only 19 years old.
It is just so heartbreaking to think about that.
And I think the thing that really bothered me the most
about this whole thing
was just the thought of being in a teeny, teeny, tiny space
with five people,
and dying the way that they died.
Like it is absolutely terrifying.
It is, for me,
if you could describe like the worst way for me to die,
that would 100% be it.
You don't even have to add four other people in there.
Just me personally,
I probably take up enough space (laughs).
But anyway, I was very curious
how you guys felt about this entire situation.
So let me know your thoughts.
Is it okay to laugh at billionaires when they die?
Let me know.
Anyway, on that note,
I'll talk to you guys later.
I want you to always remember and to never forget
that you are beautiful and you are loved,
unless you're a billionaire.
Bye.